I wrote the Inside Wall Street column at Business Week Magazine for 28 years, through December 30, 2009. It was one of the most influential market columns as it moved stocks that I highlighted each week. BW had a yearly ScoreCard Report that tracked the performance of the stocks I mentioned, and the results confirmed their positive impact..I also wrote two books: “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Street-Dark-Making-Money/dp/0070402566"Secrets of the Street, the Dark Side of Making Money,” published by McGraw-Hill in 1995, and “Gene Marcial’s Seven Commandments of Stock Investing,” published by FT Press in 2008. I resumed writing the “Inside Wall Street” column for AOL DailyFinance after Bloomberg acquired BW in December 2009. Subsequently, I moved the column to MSN.com after AOL merged with the Huffington Post. I then started writing for Forbes.com with a new column, “Street Beat,” in mid-April 2011, where I expect my readers will follow me.

Is The Dow Headed Down To 12,000 or Up To 15,000?

Is the Fiscal Cliff a Downer or an Upper? So far, the market has been, well, a cliff-hanger!

In all seriousness, there’s little doubt that any hint that President Obama and the House have finally come to a bare-knuckles agreement on how to resolve the high debt-low tax conundrum, this market will blast off to to new record highs: To 15,000 for the Dow, 1,600 for the S&P 500, and over 5,000 for the NASDAQ Composite index.

The stock market’s past two trading sessions have shown that the widely feared fiscal cliff may yet produce an upside market after all, with the Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ responding positively – for a change – to what could happen. There’s speculation that, indeed, the seemingly impossible dream may yet come true: A fiscal cliff solution.

But then, the market’s two-day exuberance and appetite for stocks may simply be due to the traditional Thanksgiving rally. If that’s true, then the market could still be in big trouble, and may still barrel down fast over that cliff.

But that may be totallly ignoring the non-obvious at this point: After a four-week losing streak, which took the Dow down to 12,588.31 on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012 – with the index losing some 3% month-to-date — a number of technical indicators are now pointing to an end to the severe market decline.

The recent rally may be more than just the usual Thanksgiving hunger for stocks!

“The major market indices are close to completing the pullback within an overall bull market,” asserts Mark D. Arbeter, chief market technical analyst at S&P Capital IQ. “And we still see the S&P 500 running up toward 1,500 in the months ahead,” he adds.

He notes that majority of the market indexes as well as individual stocks are “oversold,” as there are some “bullish divergences with respect to some momentum and internal market data.”

Arbeter says many indexes are in price areas that display strong chart support, indicating that their increases are sustainable, while some sentiment indicators have turned bearish – a bullish signal from a contrarian view, according to market technical analysts.

In the case of the S&P 500, it has dropped to another “support” zone on the 1,340-1,360 region, as momentum readings, such as the 14-day relative strength index, have fallen past their technical low point. Arbeter expects to see a type of “bottoming activity,” such as a “double-bottom” or an “inverse head-and-shoulder pattern,” that would confirm that the worst is over. But he doesn’t preclude one more drop down to the next area of support, at 1,320 in the S&P 500.

Arbeter also notes that like the S&P 500, the MidCap 400 and SmallCap 600 indexes have plunged to their bases from early this year, are either oversold or close to oversold levels that was seen in May and June 2012.

One usual sign of a bottoming process is a prevalent feeling, says Arbeter, of total desperation and frustration that there seems to be no way out of the mess we are in. “Many times, those internal feelings occur near bottoms,” says the analyst.

The heightened tension in the Middle East exacerbated by the Gaza-Israel clash has added to the market’s already overburdened worries since the Presidential elections, wrangling over the Fiscal Cliff, and global concern over the possibility of Europe heading towards a recession.

Little wonder that the bears and market worriers continue to warn about the dangers of investing in the market. Gregory MacArthur, president of investment firm Viewpoint2000, says the downside risk for the market is plunging to 12,000. On Sept. 24, 2012, he had presciently predicted that the Dow, which was then at 13,500, would tumble to as low as 12,500, just about where it closed on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012,

He isn’t buying the idea that market is now bottomming out. He thinks the big drop in the share prices of Apple (AAPL), InternationalBusiness Machines (IBM) Google (GOOG), Caterpillar (CAT), and Union Pacific (UNP) is a telling sign that the downside risks are still huge.

But when the market snaps back, MacArthur concedes that AAPL, IBM, GOOG, CAT, and UNP would be among the best stocks to buy.

In the past two trading sessions, these stocks have been among the market’s solid winners. The market may not wait for a drop to 12,000 for it to rocket anew to record high levels. On Monday, Nov. 19, 2012, the Dow closedat 12,795.96, up 201.65, or 1.65%. Hello Dow 15,000?

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